The modern Greek military

Has been some time since I last posted here, so I'll try to sum up what happened so far (not much really):
-The PzH2000 and M109A3GE2 deal seems to continue well, as the preliminary agreement was signed some time ago by the defence mininster
-Greece canceled the competition for a naval cooperation aircraft, because only two companies made offers, and only one was quilifiable. For the time Greece uses the one operational P-3 left and one adapted C-130 (which belongs to the airforce) for the role. (That's bad news if you didn't understan it)
-The BMP-3 deal has stuck. No news from there
-An interesting piece of news reached the press. Supposedly, the coucil of the navy decided to increase the number of frigates to 16 in the future, because the current (14) are not enough.
-The AH-64 Apache are being eventually accepted into service.
-Fro the 4 U-214 submarines, the one (Papanikolis) will not be accepted into Greek service, while the rest three will. Greece will build a new U-214 in Papanikolis' place, while the german shipyard are free to sell Papanikolis to whomever they want.

That's what I remember, perhaps I'm forgetting something.

EDIT:
I did forget two things: 1) One F-16 Block 50 was lost, because a bird flew into the engine. The pilot ejected from the plane safely, but the plane crashed, some km south of Ioannina.
2)All M-60A3 have now been retired, and put into long term storage. They were the last american tanks in service in mainland Greece (some 400 M-48 remain in service in the aegean islands and cyprus)

 


Edited by xristar - 05-Jun-2009 at 18:26

I think I have ben asked this question before. Yes, Greece had decided to buy 112,500 G36 rifles back in 2005(?) but the deal was never closed. Afterwards in the 5 year armaments plan the fund for the the new rifle was postponed for the second phase (after 2010). Which means that for now nothing can be expected. Nonetheless, there is great scepticism on the rifle and more on the calibre (5,56mm). American companies have developed new calibres (6,5mm and 6,8mm) which have much greater performance, and will propably be adopted by NATO in the future. So, buying a rifle in 5,56 now may not be wise.

Originally posted by Cryptic Originally posted by xristar   -Fro the 4 U-214 submarines, the one (Papanikolis) will not be accepted into Greek service, while the rest three will. Greece will build a new U-214 in Papanikolis' place, while the german shipyard are free to sell Papanikolis to whomever they want. That has got to be embarassing  for highly rated German technology companies. I wonder if the rejected submarine will be offered to Pakistan or Israel as part of their submarine purchase contracts. Even then, how does one unload a submarine that was rejected by a previous customer (except at a huge loss)?

There has been a long debate on Papanikolis (the prototype U-214), because Greece found it did not conform with the standards that the company siad it did (mainly its stability). The german company fixed it, but then still Greece refused to accept it, causing quite some frustration to the germans. For what it's worth, the greek Chief of Navy admitted that as it is now, Papanikolis is within the standards set, but Greece prefers to build a new one.
The original design was indeed faulty, though I don't think that's so surprising, even for the germans. Every new weapon has issues at first.